That Was Then, This is Dumb

_***½

A couple of Jake and Helen's old friends come to town, leading the Morgendorffer's to examine precisely how they've changed in their time since college and whether or not they've progressed as they would have liked to.

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If there's anything that Helen Morgendorffer (Wendy Hoopes) knows, it's exactly who she is, but she is nothing without her past. When Helen and Jake's (Julián Rebolledo) college friends appear at their doorstep, criticizing the materialistic values they've cultivated, they re-examine their lives in an effort to reconnect with who they once were, and it grants them the opportunity to rediscover who they were when they first fell in love, and how much they've grown together since.

At the top of the episode Helen is in a panic because, as she tells Daria (Tracy Grandstaff), she can't serve store bought bread to the Yeagers because they knew a Helen famous for her home made bread, musing that "[she] hope[s] they don't think [she's] changed too much." Soon Jake and Helen are staring into the mirror wondering if they've lost their youth, a catalyst convincing Jake to grow a beard and learn to juggle. Helen is made to pretend to tell her co-worker to mellow out until the Yeagers leave the room, at which point she phones her office back and states that she'll be there in twenty minutes. Helen and Jake become so obsessed with recapturing the ideals of their youth that they completely lose who they've become in the meantime, and their struggle to be what they think they should is an entertaining watch. In the end they both realize that they're better off now than they were then, and Jake decides to fully commit to the twenty-first century by selling his vinyl and everything else of his past.

Daria is shown to have a much easier time interacting with Trent (Alvaro J. Gonzalez), but her progression remains somewhat stilted as she still embarrasses incredibly easily in front of him. Made to wear Jane's (Hoopes) dreadfully out of date nightgown, Daria makes a great effort to hide from Trent, only to fail and have him spot her in it anyway. What makes her evolution here so believable is that it's a gradual change, she's able to function around him now, but her attraction to him is still so great that she fumbles her words and grows ever-more self-conscious. It's moments like these that make Daria seem like such a real and natural teenager, and they're definitely one of the strengths of this episode.

The Yeagers note that Jake's become a much more aggressive person since they last saw him, but in the flashback provided his temperament is exactly the same, if not worse. If anything in Jake has changed it's his ideals and the fact that he's been slightly beaten down by the pressures of work and family, but in regards to his anger issues, those have very clearly remained steady over the last few decades.

Over the course of the episode the Yeagers are shown to be largely at peace with their way of life, commenting on the changes that Helen and Jake could make in theirs in order to be happier people. Very abruptly, near the end of the story, Coyote (Frankie Dell) comments that he'd like to learn to golf, to drink alcohol, and to live as Jake does, and almost simultaneously Willow (Cookie Rufino) reveals that she's tired of farming, cooking and living on the road. At no point do the Yeagers discuss their issues with each other, and there's no resolution to their problems, instead they just drive off into the sunset, living a life both of them hate because they think their partner is in love with it. It's one thing to present their differences as simply a lifestyle change, no better or worse than how Helen and Jake lead their own lives, but as it is it seems like an attempt to comment that the old ways are worse than modern life and that they're just trapped in the past, beyond even their own control.

There's something strange about Gonzalez's tone in this episode, almost as though he's lacking the foggy mystery that Trent used to be, and while it's not necessarily a bad change, it is a noticeable one. As for the rest of the cast they do well enough in their roles, and there's a nice distinction that Hoopes makes in the tone of voice that Helen has in flashbacks.

Sue Perrotto directs a largely entertaining episode, and the balance between the Yeager storyline at the Morgendorffer household against Daria's plot at the flea market is done very nicely. The slow pan in as DeMartino (Marc Thompson) yells at Upchuck (Geoffrey Arend) is also a nice touch.

Anne D. Bernstein writes Quinn (Hoopes) as very boy crazy, most evident as Daria excuses herself from the home in the beginning, with Quinn very adamantly refusing to be left alone until she meets the Yeager's son Ethan (Louis Hirsch). While Ethan remains largely uninterested in Quinn's activities, Quinn remains steadfastly determined to spend time with him, eventually coaxing him out of the house on what she likely considers a date. In the end Quinn is able to glean information about her parent's past from Ethan, only for her and Daria to use it against them later.

Daria and Quinn manage to get themselves out of trouble here through use of the information they gathered from Ethan about their parents, though how often this trick will work remains to be seen. As Daria becomes more and more comfortable around Trent, it's only a matter of time before he clues in to her feelings toward him, and though it seems unlikely that the two will form a romance with one another, there's always the chance that they could become very good friends.

Next: Monster